


Work

by neveroffanon



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Set right after 1.15, brightwell if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23441701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: The morning after the embalming case (and a difficult moment with a certain profiler),  Dani realizes something about herself and how she’s been handling her grief.
Relationships: Dani Powell & JT Tarmel, Dani Powell & Tally Tarmel
Kudos: 9





	Work

The alarm still hadn’t gone off yet, even though the sun was already up. But she knew that it was almost time. Maybe five minutes before the alarms would begin. Normally, she would’ve rolled off the edge of the bed and landed on hands and knees in front the little nightstand next to her bed. Normally, she would have scooted down, rested on her belly and reached for the little space under the off-kilter nightstand. For the the spot where the worn floorboards would shine in morning sunlight.

Dani rolled onto her side and reached her fingertips toward the edge of the board. She could feel it, the little spot that would give, just so, and let the whole board rise and separate from the rest. She brushed it with a fingertip and sighed. The bed pressed into her shoulder, an almost sharp ache that trapped her arm just short of where she’d need to be to pull that floorboard free and see what lay inside.

Staring down at the board, just under her finger, Dani sighed. The box under the boards, she touched it every morning. She knew what was inside. A few pictures, a medal, a notebook, a ring.

A letter.

She brushed it again and rolled over to her back. With a groan she pulled herself upright and rolled up to her feet. Standing on top of the bed, she could just touch the ceiling if she stretched. The muscles in her shoulders pulled, almost burning, and Dani held it as long as she could. Arms dropping, she shuffled to the end of the bed and stepped on the floor, keeping her face determinedly away from space, from the box, from a morning routine that never helped.

Today was for a new start. She stepped up to the mirror and pulled the scarf away from her hair, unknotting the satin and tossing it over the towel rack. Her hair fell in swaying twists, and Dani unraveled the one nearest her temple, first. Blinking at herself in the mirror, unknotting the twists that had wound themselves too tight, Dani focused on keeping her mind silent and her fingers busy.

Halfway through the twists, her hands reaching to start the other side of her head, she heard the shrill of her alarm begin.

“I’m comin, don’t wake up the whole unit,” she turned away, nearly losing her place in one twist of hair and grasped for the phone where it lay on the edge of her bed. As her finger reached for the stop button, a call interrupted the alarm and her finger touched the icon to pick up the call.

“Good morning Detective Powell! You ready to work girl? JT and I are already down at the park,” Tally’s voice chirped faintly from the phone, and Dani pressed back a guilty curse. She poked at the screen, fingers slick with coconut oil, until the speaker phone icon lit up.

“Tally... I forgot we were supposed to meet up for the run,” Dani heard the intake of breath that meant Tally was about to speak and hurried to interrupt. “But all I have to do is grab a bar and some water and throw on some clothes and I’ll be there in ten.”

A silence fell, and Dani blinked down at the phone. She crouched next to the bed, hesitating.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

Dani pulled a grimace and shoved herself up, grabbing the phone with a hand and carting it with her back to the bathroom. “I slept fine, yeah. The case was just weird, you know. Necrophiliacs, a mortician giving relationship advice like she’s on The View, Edrisa being a hostage. It was... a lot.”

She brushed a hand over the rest of her hair and sighed. A bun and a hat. And after the run, it was going to be wash day for sure. That would take hours. Hours with hands too wet and full of hair to let her fingers even begin to itch for the feeling of pulling that board up.

“Girl you don’t have to tell me. It was all JT would talk about last night. He said your M.E. was kinda badass though,” Tally replied. “I still don’t quite get why the perp wanted to take the corpse. Like what was she gonna do? Carry it on her back out of the precinct? Pretend that he’d fainted?” Her laughter echoed in the small room. “He said your city boy was on this case too.”

Dani jerked, dropping the hair tie she’d been about to place in her hair onto the floor. She bent to pick it up and sighed. “When are you going to let this go huh? He’s not my city boy. He’s not my boy period.” She threaded her hair through the tie, twisting until her hair was caught into a bun low on her neck.

“Okay, you don’t have to get all—,” Tally started to reply, her voice lilting with amusement.

“Nope. Nuh uh. I know where this is going. We’re going to get off this phone, and I will see both of your slow butts in the park in five minutes.” Dani didn’t wait for Tally to reply and ended the call. She closed her eyes, squeezing the phone in her hand. The last thing she needed, today of all days, was to talk about, much less think about, a man. Any man.

After a moment, she sighed and relaxed her grip. Five minutes was going to flash by at this rate. She turned, pulling her shirt over head and tossed the phone on the bed as she passed. Pulling open the doors of the closet, she pulled out her gear, hands fumbling through motions that should have been muscle memory, second nature. Every Saturday, even if there was a case, they did a run. It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t special.

Today, though, she tried to put her arms through the top of her sports bra. Today, she put her shirt on backward, the tag tickling the skin of her chin. Today, she sat on the edge of her bed, dragged on one sock and then the other atop of that one, eyes skipping away from the board, mind trying to ignore the words burned into her mind.

_Baby girl, I know you won’t understand and I pray you never do. But—_

Dani reached across the bed for her phone and stood, turning her back on the floorboard.

He was gone. She didn’t need to think about him. He was gone, in the ground, asleep, in hell, in heaven. He was gone. She shook her head.

Five minutes were up.


End file.
